Market jitters failed to ease today as the hunt continued for
the rogue City traders who made hundreds of millions of pounds amid
a swirl of rumours about Britain's biggest mortgage lender.

The FTSE plunged by almost 60 points shortly after opening. By
8.15am, it was down 58.2 to 5487.4 as blue chip stocks carried on
their descent into the red, although by mid-morning it had rallied
slightly to 5507.2.

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), which was the centre of yesterday's
financial storm, was making tentative gains as bosses attempted
to quash the rumours and ease investor nerves.

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But a profit warning from investment bank Credit Suisse did little
to help fragile sentiment among investors, as did heavy overnight
falls on Wall Street which saw the Dow Jones close down almost 300
points.

Global markets were also volatile, with the Hang Seng index in
Hong Kong closing down 758.7 points at 21108.2 while the Straits
Times index in Singapore was down 8.3 points to 2824.9.

Bank of England governor Mervyn King will meet banking chiefs later
today, where he is expected to face demands to pump more cash into
money markets to ease the deepening credit crisis.

But the extraordinary events surrounding HBOS shares is also sure
to feature on the agenda.

Its share price dropped as much as 20 per cent at one point yesterday
after speculators began spreading malicious, false rumours about
the bank's imminent implosion.

A single trader may have made £100 million from the collapse,
which has been dubbed a "modern day bank robbery" and
is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The drama started to unfold at 8.31 when shares in HBOS began to
wobble. What followed was one of the most remarkable morning's trading
in recent stock market history.